The creation of a partly state-owned Russian metals and mining “champion” edges towards reality. President Dmitry Medvedev summoned oligarchs last week to discuss solutions to Russia’s metals crisis. Collapsing commodity and share prices, coupled with the tycoons’ mountainous debts – partly to state-controlled banks – leave the Kremlin holding the strongest cards. The question is what form a metals titan might take. The danger is that a Frankenstein’s monster with little commercial sense might be created.

Plan A, put by Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska, veers in that direction. It unites Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer, with steel groups Mechel and Evraz, metals group Metalloinvest, and Uralkali, a potash producer. The state, writing off other groups’ debts, would take 25 per cent plus one share, via state-owned Russian Technologies. Mr Deripaska is apparently ready to contribute his 25 per cent Norilsk stake in return for leaving out Rusal, the aluminium giant whose independence he is striving to preserve in spite of its near $17bn debt. Bringing together iron ore, coal, steel mills and nickel to make stainless steel has some logic. But it is hard to see where fertilisers fit – or find much scope for synergies.